Shadow chancellor Ed Balls will outline his vision of an economy based on co-operative values when he speaks at the Co-operative Party conference next weekend....
Articles
One Nation Book Launched at Conference
A new book about the ideas behind Ed Miliband’s ‘one nation Labour’ was launched at the Labour Party conference in Brighton last weekend and is now available to buy or download from the Labour website....
Maxton: The Will to Socialism
Written by JAMES MAXTON in 1927 Why should people live lives of poverty and toil? Why should people rise in the morning fearing to face life because of the evils, the cares and the sorrows it brings. Should life not rather be a carefree joyous adventure that all should meet with confidence and hope?...
ILP@120: James Maxton – Glasgow’s Red Rebel
WILLIAM KNOX charts the devoted life of ILP leader James Maxton, “a special kind of orator who inspired human beings to struggle for socialism”. James Maxton was born on 22 June 1885 in Pollockshaws, Glasgow, the son of James Maxton, schoolteacher, and Melvina (née Purdon), a former school teacher. At the time of Maxton’s...
ILP@120: James Maxton – Socialism’s Great Crusader
James Maxton was the ILP’s visionary, a man with “an inherent sense of human equality” who ultimately failed in his mission to make socialism the common sense. GORDON BROWN MP assesses his life and legacy. Throughout his career, whether on a street corner or in the House of Commons, Maxton sought to make socialism the...
First Impressions of the People’s Assembly
MATTHEW BROWN reports from the first meeting of a local People’s Assembly, where hardship and hope were much in evidence – unlike the Labour Party. “I paid my rent just 10 minutes ago and now I have £22 left in my account.” The words came from a young man introducing himself to the first meeting...
ILP@120: Herbert Witard – From Ragamuffin to Lord Mayor
Herbert Witard emerged from a childhood of dire poverty to become an ILP councillor and Labour’s first Lord Mayor of Norwich. MAGGIE PEPLOE tells the tale....
End of the Party?
PAUL SALVESON ponders the future of party politics and sees instead a future dominated by regionalist movements and single-issue campaigns....
March to Save the NHS
Supporters of the National Health Service will be marching in Manchester at the end of the month to deliver a message to Conservative Party conference that they mean to save the NHS from cuts and privatisation, and “defend jobs, services and a decent welfare state”....
ILP@120: Arthur Raistrick – The Dales’ Own Man of Peace
BARRY WINTER remembers Arthur Raistrick, the writer, geologist, pacifist, educator and ILPer who became the ‘Dalesman of the Millennium’. Arthur Raistrick was born in 1896 into a working class family in the model industrial village of Saltaire in Yorkshire. His mother, Minnie, together with other relatives, worked at the famous Salt’s textile Mill. His father,...
ILP@120: Dorothy Jewson – Norwich Socialist and Suffragette
FRANK MEERES reveals how the daughter of a famous builders’ merchant from Norwich became a suffragette and ILPer, and one of the Labour Party’s first women MPs. Dorothy Jewson was born on 17 August 1884, the daughter of George and Mary Jewson of Braemar, on the Thorpe Road in Norwich. She was christened Dorothea but...
A Club of One’s Own
PAUL SALVESON laments the decline of labour and socialist clubs. But while many are closing, he says, at least one is being re-born in a new co-operative guise....